Archive of Our Own

Melanie sits at her desk, awl in hand. She’s done her research, knows how much damage she’s going to have to do to be sure of never, ever seeing again. Knows how much it’s going to hurt. But she’s ready. She’s got food in her cupboards, a cane ready to go, screen readers up and running on her phone and laptop. Her flat is tidier than it’s been since she moved in, everything in its place so that it’s easy to find when she needs it. She even, in a moment of genius, fixed the bit of carpet that sticks up and has been tripping her three times a day for the last year and a half. There hasn’t been time to do anything very complicated: she’s afraid that if she waits too long, the fucking Beholding will orchestrate something that’ll stop her from going ahead with her plans. But what she can do in a few days, she has done.

So here she is. Letter of resignation on Peter Lukas’s desk. Letter of explanation for Jon and the others on hers. Not that Jon will need it now. She hadn’t intended to talk to him before doing it, but when it had come to the moment, awl clutched in her sweaty hand, phone on her desk in front of her, 999 already dialled so that all she needed to do was hit the call button, she somehow hadn’t been able to make herself do it without a goodbye.

And now that goodbye has been said and she’s back at her desk, phone in her pocket, awl turning over between her fingers, peace in her heart. Jon’s even going to call the ambulance for her. All she needs to think about now is making sure her eyes are destroyed as completely as she can manage.

Well, that and hoping Georgie won’t break up with her when she finds out what she’s done, of course. It’s lucky for Melanie that Georgie’s got a massive soft spot for pathetic losers who come to her begging for help, because otherwise she’d be sunk. They’ve only been dating for three weeks, although they’ve been friends for much longer. And yeah, obviously Melanie knows she should have told Georgie what she’s about to do. Georgie wouldn’t have stopped her: Georgie still thinks that Jon should have chosen to die instead of come back as whatever he is now. She’ll know that Melanie’s made the right decision.

It’s just that if Georgie were here, even if she were just waiting outside or all the way at home, but still knowing what Melanie’s about to do… it would have made it all so much harder. Melanie doesn’t know if she has that kind of strength. Better to call Georgie afterwards and tell her. Georgie will help. Whatever Melanie needs, Georgie will give her.

Melanie is very, very sure that she doesn’t deserve Georgie.

All right. She has everything she needs. Jon will call the ambulance in a few minutes.

It’s time.

She lifts the awl to her face.

*

Time flickers past Melanie in strange, swooping rushes. Voices. Pain. She vomits once. Maybe twice. More? She’s lying down, or perhaps she’s not, perhaps she’s suspended somewhere, spinning, spinning, spinning. People ask her questions and she tries to answer them. She’s cold. Why is she so bloody cold? Georgie’s voice isn’t among the ones she hears. She doesn’t know any of them. Georgie wouldn’t leave her. Georgie won’t leave her.

She tries to open her eyes and is almost surprised when she sees nothing.

She laughs and laughs and laughs.

*

Everything is more strange, more difficult, more disorientating than Melanie had expected. It seems like a long time before she realises that the odd humming vibration around her is the ambulance, that they’re driving, on their way to the hospital, traffic rumbling all around. There are hands on her face, their texture strange. And fabric, or… or something. Why is it so hard to tell what’s what? She hopes it won’t take Georgie too long to get to the hospital. She wishes Georgie was here now, it was stupid to do this alone, but she hadn’t known how else to…

Oh. Oh, wait. She hasn’t called Georgie yet, has she? She’s almost sure. Georgie has no idea what she’s done.

Melanie fumbles at her pockets with shaking hands. She can’t remember which one she put her phone in, but she finds it eventually. The touches move away from her, an unfamiliar voice saying yes, they can wait while she calls someone. Does she need help with her phone? She scoffs, what do they think she practiced with the screen reader for if not so that she could use her own damn phone?

Still, it’s harder than it should be. Her hands are trembling, clumsy, slimy and tacky with something she doesn’t want to think about too hard, and her voice is shaking nearly as much.

And then Georgie’s voice is in her ear and things settle a little.

“Hey, Mel,” she says, cheery as anything. Melanie can’t help but smile, though it feels wobbly. “What’s up?”

“Georgie.” For a second she’s too scared to say it. She’s sure Georgie will think she’s done the right thing, but… it was pretty drastic. What if Georgie doesn’t understand? “Can… can you come to the hospital? I’ve done something.”

“What?” Georgie says, and her voice isn’t cheery any more. It’s edged with something. Concern? Anger? Melanie can’t tell. She’s known Georgie for years and she can’t tell. “What’s happened?”

Just fucking say it, Melanie, she tells herself. You’re not a fucking coward.

“Destroyed my eyes,” she says. “Took an awl to them. Pretty damn effective.”

And she starts to laugh again. Through it, she hears Georgie. “But wh… oh. Oh. Oh my god. Yeah, of course, Melanie. I’m there.”

*

“It’s for your own safety,” the psychiatrist says, not very patiently. Melanie scowls.

And yeah, okay, she’ll admit that it probably should have occurred to her beforehand that normal people who haven’t been trapped in the employment of an eldritch Eye monster won’t have any way of understanding that mutilating her own eyes beyond hope of ever seeing again was the best and healthiest choice for her. But it didn’t. In all her planning, she never thought about it for a second. That’s one of the shitty things about being mired in all this fear god bollocks: even the worst parts of it start to feel normal, almost mundane. You forget that most people don’t have a clue.

So here she is, sitting, exhausted and dizzy, in a shitty meeting with her doctor, the psychiatrist whose name she forgot within the first five minutes and is such an arsehole that she doesn’t even regret it, a social worker of some kind, her therapist Laverne, and Georgie. Georgie is the only one who doesn’t want her admitted to the psych ward the moment she’s discharged from here.

“I’m perfectly safe,” she says, trying not to let the anger and frustration bleed into her voice. That won’t help anything. “I’m not going to do anything else to myself. I promise, okay? I did it for a reason and it worked. There’s not going to be any more.”

But it’s about the fifteenth time she’s said this, or something like it, and nobody believes her. They’ve talked about sectioning her, and if it comes to that Melanie will give in and go voluntarily if they’ll still let her, but she doesn’t want to. It’s not going to help. She’s not a danger to herself. This wasn’t some fucking cry for help, it was her helping her goddamn self! She doesn’t need to be watched, she doesn’t need to talk about her feelings. Well, all right, she does, but she can do that in her usual sessions with Laverne. None of them fucking understand.

“What if I come to stay with her?” Georgie says. There’s a little silence, in which Melanie imagines everyone turning to look at Georgie.

“You think you’ll be able to control her?” the psychiatrist says. It’s been a while since Melanie really wanted to stab anyone, but god, the urge is surging back up in her right now with a sick, visceral heat. Control her? What a fucking bag of dicks.

But Georgie, bless her a thousand times over, answers as calmly as if the psychiatrist has said something entirely reasonable.

“Yes,” she says. “She listens to me, and I know her well. I can call someone if I think she’s going to hurt herself again.” A very small pause. “And if it comes to it, I’m a lot bigger than she is.”

For fuck’s… Melanie bites down on her protests. Georgie’s trying to convince these shitstains that she won’t hurt herself again if she comes home with her. She has to say this crap. This is how she fights for Melanie, at least today.

And, in the end, it works. It takes a lot more talking, a lot more negotiating, a lot more times of saying that Melanie has no intention of hurting herself again, that actually, despite the pain and nausea and confusion and not being able to see, she feels great now, thanks very much. But eventually it’s agreed. Melanie has to keep seeing Laverne, which is fine, has to see the psychiatrist every week too for a while, which is a lot less fine, has to go and stay with Georgie instead of Georgie staying with her, has to make a hundred promises and smile a hundred smiles, but it works.

She can go home with Georgie.

*

“Mind the coffee table!” Georgie says, and if Melanie still had eyes she’d be rolling them, because where, exactly, is she supposed to be minding? She bites back her irritated retort and pushes a foot forward carefully. “Oh,” Georgie adds, catching on just as the foot comes into contact with the coffee table leg. “On your right. Sorry.”

“Thanks,” Melanie says, completely failing to stop it from sounding sarcastic. She manages to find her way to the sofa and sinks down into the soft cushions, relieved.

This is the best case scenario, given the way most people have decided to interpret her actions. Melanie knows that, and god, she’s so grateful to Georgie. For stopping them sending her to the psych ward, for offering up her flat to Melanie for an indefinite period without a moment’s hesitation, for spending every minute of visiting hours with her while she was in hospital, for spending most of the time between inviting Melanie to her flat and Melanie arriving here tidying it up, because Melanie’s seen Georgie’s flat. It’s a pigsty, always has been, always will be.

Except, of course, that it won’t always be. Because here’s Melanie, unexpected intruder, sight newly lost, limbs peculiarly weak, never sure where on the spectrum of slightly wibbly to spinning like a merry-go-round on a homicidal rampage her head will be at any given moment. Georgie has very nearly literally turned her home upside down to accommodate Melanie, and she’s done it in about a day and a half, which is how long it was between everybody finally agreeing that Melanie could come here and the hospital discharging her. And now Melanie’s pissed off with her three minutes after walking through the front door just because Georgie hasn’t learned to be the perfect companion to a person who’s just stabbed their eyes out in the course of a few days.

It’s not Georgie she’s pissed off with, not really. It’s the whole goddamn situation. If Melanie had been able to go to her own flat, everything would be ten times easier. She knows where she keeps all her stuff, she’d created a system, she’d even stuck little raised dots on things with identical bottles, like shampoo and conditioner, so that she’d know which was which. Her ready meals are a work of bloody art. She’d prepared! But for some dickwad reason he’d cooked up in his own dickwad brain, the dickwad psychiatrist had decided that she couldn’t be trusted in her own home and would have to stay with Georgie. Even when Georgie had said she’d move in with Melanie, even when they’d both explained how much easier it would be for Melanie in the flat she’s occupied for three years and knows a lot better than the back of her hand, since, actually, she hasn’t spent a whole lot of time staring at the back of her own hand. In her darker moments, Melanie suspects that he insisted on her going to Georgie’s because it would be harder. Dickwad.

“Sorry,” she mutters. “Didn’t mean to snap at you.”

“It’s okay,” Georgie says, sitting down next to her. “I’ll try and remember to be more specific next time.”

“Not your fault,” Melanie says, because it’s not. Georgie’s had even less time than Melanie to wrap her head around all this, and she’s hardly let it faze her at all.

“Well, it’s not yours, either,” Georgie says.

“I am the one who stabbed my own eyes out.”

Georgie snorts. “Fair point. Do you want a drink? How’s your head doing?”

“Not too bad at the moment, just a bit wobbly. Wouldn’t say no to a cuppa, though.”

“Coming up,” Georgie says, and gets up again.

Melanie bends forward to pull her shoes off, sets them carefully to the side of the sofa where she won’t trip over them when she gets up, and pulls her feet up onto the cushions. She wasn’t lying about her head, it’s mostly steady at the moment. She can tell which way is up and which way is down and more or less where she is in relation to the rest of the world. She’s just incredibly tired. She wonders if all of this is normal after a serious eye injury. Her doctors didn’t seem to take it too seriously, said she’d start to feel better soon. She’ll have to google it. She’ll have to google why…

no, what…

what?

Where is she? Why can’t she… she puts her hands up to her face, finds thick pads or dressings or something over her eyes. What the actual bloody fuck?

She scrambles to her feet and only realises that she’s in her socked feet when she stubs her toe on something.

“Fuck,” she growls, and collapses back onto the soft thing she was sitting on before, grasping at her foot. “Bloody fucking…”

“Melanie?”

“Georgie?” Melanie lifts her head. Her foot hurts. Why does her foot hurt? Her eyes, too, her whole head, which is weird, because she also can’t see. Something’s wrong. Something’s horribly wrong.

The thing she’s sitting on dips weirdly and Melanie almost topples over. She’s only stopped by hands on her upper arms, grasping firmly, holding her steady.

“It’s all right, Melanie,” Georgie says. It’s Georgie. Thank god. “You’re at my flat. You’re staying with me for a while so that you can recover, remember? You stabbed your eyes out to escape the Magnus Institute.”

“Um,” Melanie says. Slowly, her mind rights itself. The Magnus Institute. Of course she remembers that. She remembers walking in through Georgie’s front door not ten minutes ago. She remembers all of it. “Jesus,” she says. “Yeah, okay. I remember. Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” Georgie’s hands disappear from around her arms, and Melanie leans against what she thinks must be the back of the sofa, her head spinning. “Do you still want that tea, or do you need to lie down?”

Melanie groans. “Both?” she suggests. “Maybe I can drink it through a straw while I’m lying down.”

Georgie has to half carry her to bed, because Melanie’s lost all sense of the world that is presumably still around her. It’s better once she’s lying down, cheek pressed against the cool pillowcase and the soft solidity of the bed along her side. It gets even better once Georgie finishes making the tea and joins her, one hand gently resting on Melanie’s to steady the cup as Melanie sucks tea up through a straw Georgie’s dug up from somewhere, the other hand stroking gently over her shoulder. Melanie remembers Jon talking about anchors and thinks she finally understands what he meant.

*

Embarrassingly, it isn’t until she’s been at Georgie’s for nearly a week that Melanie manages to put the pieces together. In her defence, it’s hard to build a jigsaw puzzle when you keep forgetting what the pieces look like. Which is a shitty metaphor and makes a note creep into Georgie’s voice that makes Melanie certain that she’s doing that stupidly adorable thing where her nose wrinkles and her eyebrows go all wiggly.

“Are you saying you want to do a jigsaw?” Georgie says, sounding so blankly baffled that Melanie has to laugh.

“God, no,” she says. “I hate those things. They’re so nitpicky, and people really hate it when you throw all the pieces on the floor and jump on them.”

Georgie sniggers. “Yeah, can’t really see you as a puzzle person.”

They both laugh, and there’s a little silence. Melanie brushes her fingertips across the palm of Georgie’s right hand. She can feel the lines there, the scar under Georgie’s little finger, the way her hand flexes slightly under Melanie’s touch.

“What I was trying to say,” she says, turning Georgie’s hand over and rubbing her thumb along Georgie’s knuckles, “is that I think it’s because of the Eye. Capital E. All the confusion and… and weakness and stuff.”

Ugh. Even admitting aloud that she sometimes feels weak is shitty.

“The Eye?” Georgie’s voice is sharper suddenly. “What do you… are you saying you haven’t escaped it after all?”

“No, no,” Melanie says quickly. “The opposite. It’s just… I’ve been working for it for ages. Doesn’t matter how little I wanted to, I still… even more so after Jon and Basira took the bullet out of me. I think this is the result of suddenly, you know, gouging the Eye out of me.”

Georgie’s fingers curl around hers. “Right,” she says. “Yeah, that… that does make a horrible kind of sense. Memory loss, dizziness, disorientation, not knowing where you are or what’s going on. It does all seem like the kind of bullshit that’d happen when you quit the Eye.”

“Exactly.”

“Do you think it’ll… I mean, is it always going to be like this for you now?”

“I really wish I knew,” Melanie says grimly. “Maybe it’s like a… a withdrawal or something. It’ll fuck me up for a while, but eventually I’ll get over it. Or maybe the Eye fucked with me so much that getting rid of it’s like, I dunno, cutting my brain in half. The effects will always be there. With my luck it’s probably the second one.”

“Well, if it is, we’ll deal, okay?”

There’s a small pause, and then Melanie makes herself say, “Yeah. Of course.”

Georgie’s soft lips press against her fingers, and Melanie lets out a long sigh.

*

“The Admiral…” Georgie says, and then stops because, shiny new bell jingling, the Admiral has already streaked right between Melanie’s feet in his attempt to get out through the front door as they leave. Lucky for Melanie, there’s always a particular high-pitched note of mingled concern, annoyance and amusement in Georgie’s voice when the Admiral’s about to be responsible for an accident, and she’s already learned to freeze the second she hears either it or his bell. It’s safer for all three of them that way. “Here, just let me…” Georgie says. The bell tinkles briefly. “Okay, go on.”

Melanie slips out through the door and waits for Georgie to join her.

“Sorry about that,” Georgie says. “I don’t think we’re ever going to teach him not to get under people’s feet.”

Melanie grins. “He’s a cat, it’s his job. The bell helps a lot, though, that was a good idea.”

“I honestly thought he’d mind it more,” Georgie says, as Melanie pushes the lift call button. “You wouldn’t believe how long it took me to get him used to wearing a collar.”

“He’s mellowed with age,” Melanie says. She didn’t know Georgie when she first got the Admiral, but she’s seen the videos of him zooming around Georgie’s flat as a kitten. So cute.

“Lucky for us,” Georgie says, and they both laugh.

It’s a good day, easily Melanie’s best since leaving the hospital. She’s only had one dizzy spell and she was safely sitting down at the time, and no memory loss or confusion at all. Even her eye sockets feel less sore than usual.

The lift pings to a halt on the ground floor, and Melanie sweeps her cane carefully out in front of her, as she’s been practising in the safety of the flat. Slowly, carefully, she makes her way out of the building. The sun’s warmth hits her the moment she steps outside. A slight breeze brushes her face, and even the air smells fresh and sweet. She can hear voices, traffic, birds. A dog barking somewhere. Melanie’s never been an outdoorsy kind of person, but god, it’s good to feel this again. It’s only been a week, but it suddenly feels as though she’s been cooped up forever.

“All right?” Georgie says, close beside her, though not touching.

“Really good, actually,” Melanie says, and moves forward again.

They only go for a short walk that day, neither of them willing to risk being too far from home if Melanie has another dizzy spell or starts forgetting things again, but she doesn’t, or not until they’re back in the flat, by which time she’s so elated by having achieved a whole walk without disaster that she hardly cares that she has to lie quietly on the sofa for most of the evening.

*

It goes like this:

Sometimes Melanie gets up in the morning, at least two hours after Georgie because what reasonable person gets up at six o’clock when they don’t have to, and showers, and breakfasts, and listens to a podcast or an audiobook, and practices Braille until she gets too frustrated with her own slowness and puts the materials away carefully, resisting the urge to fling them away from herself in fury. She cuddles the Admiral and helps Georgie cook, relearning knife skills and mapping out Georgie’s kitchen with her hands. A couple of times they even bake together, filling the flat with warmth and the smell of sweet spices. When they go to bed, it’s with soft words and gentle caresses and Melanie sinking into the unexpected delight of discovering every inch of Georgie’s body by touch and taste and smell.

On other days, Melanie is tired by lunchtime. Braille eludes her, and even with her cane, she bumps toes and knees and elbows constantly. Georgie cooks food that seems tasteless, although Melanie tries to look as though she enjoys it. She gets up late and goes to bed early, and in between spends hours at a time on the internet, diving into the most depressing rabbit holes she can find, sometimes about eye loss, sometimes about anything as long as it’s miserable. She can tell by the note in Georgie’s voice that she worries, but she doesn’t try to take Melanie’s phone away or cajole her into healthier coping mechanisms, and god but Melanie appreciates that, even if she has to wait for a good day to be able to say it aloud.

And on some very bad days, Melanie wakes up shaking and crying from nightmares she can’t remember, unable to work out how to move her limbs to get out of bed or even to be sure she’s in bed at all. Sometimes she thinks she’s at the Institute, or at her flat, or in some shapeless, nameless void that’s filled with nothing but blackness and screaming. Georgie has to remind her a dozen times a day of where she is and what’s happened. Even, once or twice, of her own name. Melanie cries and swears and rails against her own weakness, and her only solace comes from Georgie’s strong, steady hands and the Admiral, curled up and purring on her chest. Real things, alive things, warm things, things that remind her, with or without words, who and where and what and how she is.

Even her worst days, though, are better than before, trapped and squirming under the gaze of Elias and the Beholding, knowing her brain could be opened up and rootled around in at any time and she might not even be aware of it. Georgie might have to keep on reminding her of where she’s been and what she did to escape it, but the peace that settles in her heart each time the memories come flooding back is worth every night terror, every moment of fear and confusion, and Melanie knows that even if her condition never improves, she won’t regret stabbing her eyes out. Not ever. Not for a second.

*

“For god’s sake, Georgie!” Melanie yells, stalking into the kitchen as fast as she can manage given that she’s a tad woozy today. “I am capable of making us both a cup of tea! You don’t have to do every tiny bloody thing for me!”

She hears the telltale jingle of the Admiral’s bell and pauses for a moment, but he’s running away this time, not towards her. He’s always hated raised voices. Melanie breathes heavily through her nose for a moment, trying to force herself to modulate her tone.

“I’m sorry,” Georgie says. “I thought it’d be easier…”

“I offered you tea,” Melanie says tightly. Her voice is shaking slightly from the effort of keeping it level. “I was going to make it myself.”

“I know, babe,” Georgie says. “But it’s so easy for me, and…”

“It’s not about it being easy!”

“Look, I’m sorry, okay? I just wanted to help!”

“You’re my girlfriend, not my mum!” Melanie cries, her voice rising again, high and angry. “We’re supposed to do all this together, not with me sitting around like a Victorian invalid and you just… just taking away anything that might be the tiniest little bit hard for me! I like hard stuff, okay? I don’t care that it’s hard, I just want to do it!”

For a long moment there’s silence from where Georgie is standing somewhere in the vicinity of the sink. Then there’s a plastic clunking sound. She’s put the kettle down.

“I didn’t mean to take anything away from you,” she says in a small voice.

Melanie lets out a long breath. “I know,” she says. “No, I… I do know that. But I need to do things for myself, Georgie. I know it’ll take longer and I’ll make mistakes, probably make a huge mess sometimes, and then you’ll have to help me clean it up, and that’s a ton of extra work for you…”

“You know I don’t mind that.”

“I do, and I really, really appreciate it, but I… I still need you to let me make the messes. I need to be able to do things for you, even if it does take a bit longer at first. Even if it’s hard. I need… I’m still me, Georgie. Losing my eyes didn’t suddenly turn me into the sort of person who wants to sit around while someone else does all the work, you know?”

Georgie gives a little snuffle of laughter. “I never thought that,” she says. “But I am sorry, Melanie. I never meant to take away your independence.”

“I know,” Melanie says again. “And thanks.”

She hears Georgie’s bare feet on the linoleum, and then Georgie’s hand is resting lightly on her elbow and she’s kissing Melanie’s cheek. Melanie turns her head to kiss her lips instead.

“So,” Georgie says, when she’s finished. “Kettle’s to the left of the sink and already filled, if you want to make us that tea. I, personally, am going to sit down and put my feet up.”

Melanie laughs, kisses her again, and lets her go. The kettle is exactly where Georgie said it would be, and Melanie puts it on its stand, flicks it on, and begins the careful process of making tea.

It is hard still, is the thing. She’s worked out a process and practiced it, but she still has to concentrate to make sure she does everything right and doesn’t accidentally chuck boiling water all over herself. It’ll get easier with time.

For now, it’s a painstaking procedure. Find mugs and teabags in their proper place in the cupboard. Make sure the mugs are safely in the middle of the countertop and the teabags are properly in the mugs. Go to the fridge, get out the milk, pluck the little liquid level indicator off the fridge door, leave the milk to the right of the mugs where it’ll be easy to find and affix the indicator to the first mug. Switch the kettle off when it boils. Find the lip of the mug with the kettle spout. Pour carefully until the indicator beeps. Add milk until it beeps again. Repeat with second mug. Wipe indicator clean. Return milk and indicator to fridge. Fish around in mugs with teaspoon until teabags allow themselves to be caught, dump in bin. Finally, pick up mugs and carefully carry them through to the living room.

Georgie simply says, “Thanks, babe,” when Melanie hands her her mug.

Melanie puts her own mug down on the coffee table, sinks down onto the sofa, and leans against Georgie’s shoulder. “I’m really bloody tired,” she admits.

Georgie’s arm wraps around her. “I know.” She kisses the top of Melanie’s head. “Do you need sympathy and validation, or do you need me to tell you it’s all going to be okay?”

Georgie knows her so well. Melanie curls up against her and says, “Bit of both?”

“I can do that,” Georgie says.

So Melanie stays in the safe curve of Georgie’s arm and listens to Georgie tell her that she’s allowed to feel bad, and angry, and depressed, and hopeless, and that it’s going to keep on getting better, even when there are hard days. The sound of rain coming down outside is heavy and comforting, and after a while the Admiral decides to forgive her for yelling and jumps up into her lap and, for once, Melanie lets herself relax.

*

The day Jon comes is a bad day. Of course it is. It’s not like Jon could know, but of course he’d roll up to the flat, desperate for help, on the worst day Melanie’s had since her first week home from the hospital. At first, fighting her way to wakefulness from a nightmare-ridden doze with the aid of the Admiral’s bell as he leaps off her chest, she doesn’t even realise who it is with Georgie in the living room. But Georgie sounds pissed off, so Melanie eases herself upright, waits for her head to settle as much as it’s likely to, and then heads dizzily out there, leaning on the wall as she goes.

Their voices fall silent when she opens the door, and it takes Melanie a moment to conjure vaguely coherent words.

“What’s go… what’s going on?” she says. “You woke the Admiral.”

“Hey, hey, easy,” Georgie says. Her voice is slow and gentle, and Melanie almost resents how reassuring it is. “It… it’s all right, he was just leaving.”

“Melanie, I…” the person Georgie was talking to says, and this time Melanie does recognise the voice.

“Jon?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” Jon says. His voice is oddly gentle, too, and Melanie wonders how rough she must look for it to do that. He could at least have had the courtesy to come round on a day when she’s capable of doing things like scowling or yelling or standing upright without having to hold onto a wall. Still, it could be worse. At least she knows who she is.

“It’s all right, Melanie,” Georgie says. “Jon, leave.”

“I’m sorry,” Jon says. Huh. Maybe he doesn’t sound gentle so much as… wretched. Desperate. “I just, it’s Martin.”

“Jon, don’t,” she says, the words tumbling from her mouth before she’s even had a chance to think about them. “Please.”

“No, you’re right,” he says quickly. “I’m sorry. Are you all right?”

Guilt twists in her gut along with the nausea that was already churning away in there, but she doesn’t backtrack. Instead, a lot more honestly than she’d expected herself to be when talking to Jon, she says, “Yes, I’m… I’m actually doing okay.”

“That’s good,” Jon says. He sounds like he means it.

Melanie finds herself laughing a little. It’s sort of weirdly nice to talk to someone who isn’t Georgie or Laverne or her shitty psychiatrist, even if that person is Jon, who still shows up in her nightmares way too often. And he really did do his best for her, even if she’s never going to actually like the guy.

“My therapist isn’t happy about it,” she says. “You know, unsurprisingly. Tried to have me put away, but they… they let me come here. It… it’s been good for me, though. I feel all right. I’m… I’m not scared any more.”

“Melanie, you don’t have to do this,” Georgie says.

“It’s okay,” she says, nearly shakes her head and then decides against it at the last moment. In the state she’s in right now, it could spell disaster. She presses on. “He’s welcome, as a friend. But that’s it.”

“Right,” Jon says.

“But you’re not after a friend, are you, Jon?” she says.

“I need an ally,” he bursts out, and god, he does sound desperate.

“Then I can’t help you,” Melanie says.

“I suppose not,” he says.

“Okay, you’re done?” Georgie snaps.

“Yeah,” Jon says. “Yeah, I am.”

“Come on Melanie,” Georgie says, apparently dismissing him entirely. “Let’s get you back to bed.”

“Look after yourself,” Jon says. “Both of you.”

He’s trying. She can tell he’s trying. A bit helplessly she says, “You too. Good luck, I guess,” and the front door swings closed.

Immediately, Georgie’s hands are gently urging her back towards the bedroom, and Melanie goes willingly, most of her strength sapped by the short conversation.

“I can’t believe him,” Georgie says angrily, once she’s settled Melanie back in bed. “Coming here and demanding help when he knows what you’ve done to escape all that bullshit. I swear, I nearly hit him.”

Melanie snorts with laughter. “I’d pay good money to see that,” she says.

“I mean, I could call him, get him to come back, surprise him with a right hook to the jaw when he comes in.”

And now Melanie’s laughing properly, despite the way it sets her head spinning, round and round and round, like she’s on a roundabout drunk and clinging on with her fingernails for dear life. In the end she has to stop laughing, clutches her head with a groan instead. For a second she thinks she’s sitting at her desk in the Magnus Institute and someone’s turned out all the lights, but before she can yell out for whoever it is to stop playing around, there’s a warm hand stroking gently up and down her arm, and Georgie’s voice is saying her name, and she’s back in Georgie’s flat.

“Melanie? Melanie? Are you okay? Do you know where you are?”

“Yeah,” Melanie says, suddenly exhausted again. “Melanie King, at your flat, stabbed out my eyes to get rid of the Beholding.”

“Okay. Good.”

“Did forget it for a second there, though. Thought I was back at the Institute.”

“But you remembered by yourself,” Georgie points out. “That’s progress.”

“Oh,” Melanie says, almost blankly. “Yeah, that’s true. Thanks.” Georgie’s fingers dance intricate patterns over the skin of her arm, and for a while Melanie lies there, letting Georgie’s touch ground and soothe her. “D’you think I should have helped him?” she says abruptly.

Georgie’s fingers still. “What, Jon?” she says. “Of course not.”

“Mmm.” Melanie bites her lip.

After a moment, Georgie says, “Why do you ask?”

“I just… you know, it’s Jon, isn’t it? If he’s asking for help, actually coming all the way out to your flat to ask for it, it has to be something really important. I don’t know.”

“Melanie, you cut your own eyes out to escape all that,” Georgie says. “Why would you ever risk going back to it?”

“No, it’s not… I don’t mean going back. God, no. I just mean that maybe I could have helped from a… a distance, or something.”

She isn’t sure she could have, actually, and just the thought of trying makes her want to curl up in a tiny ball and scream until the whole world goes away, but still.

“Look, Jon’s made his choice,” Georgie says. “He could do the same as you, get away from it all, if he really wanted to, and he’s decided to stay. He’s the one who has to deal with the consequences of that. It’s not your responsibility.”

“Yeah,” Melanie says. It isn’t as simple as that. It wasn’t for her, and it isn’t for Jon. She knows what she walked away from, what she left the others to face without her. But Georgie doesn’t understand, not entirely, what it’s like to be part of the Magnus Institute, how hard it holds on to you, what it takes to make it let go, and she doesn’t truly comprehend how much danger the world is in if one of those bloody rituals ever succeeds. Leaving was the right decision for Melanie, and she knows the others get it, but that doesn’t make it right for everyone. But Georgie can’t wrap her head around that, and Melanie isn’t going to try to explain it to her.

Nobody should have to understand that.

*

be careful, lie low. bad shit went down at the institute, J&M on the run, Lukas dead, cops useless, not-them loose, hunters loose, Elias loose and also Jonah Magnus, don’t go out unless necessary

It’s two days after Jon’s visit, and Basira has just sent the exact same text to both Melanie and Georgie. For a moment they stand there in baffled silence.

Then Georgie says, a bit faintly, “Okay, what the hell?”

Melanie makes her phone read it again. “Yeah, I’ve got nothing,” she says. “We should probably do as she says, though.”

“Yes,” Georgie says. “God, yes. Basira wouldn’t… but what the fuck is going on? Does this mean that Jonah Magnus is also loose or that Elias is also Jonah Magnus? Neither of those makes any sense! Jonah Magnus lived like two hundred years ago!”

Melanie finds herself grimacing. “I’d believe either at this point.”

“And Jon and Martin are on the run,” Georgie says, still puzzling out the message. “What do you think happened there?”

“It says Lukas is dead too. Maybe Martin finally snapped and killed him.”

Georgie huffs a little laugh. There’s a beat of silence, and then she says, “Do you think it was to do with whatever Jon wanted the other day?”

“Probably, yeah,” Melanie says.

“Fuck.” There’s a little rustle, and then Georgie groans. “Fuck. Fuck. You were right. We should have helped him, even if it was just… just giving him advice. That little idiot, god knows what he’s been and gone and done.”

“Georgie.”

“I just… I tried so hard to help him, and he just went back to it all like it was nothing, like everything I did was nothing! And now he’s on the run again. I knew… I knew something like this was going to happen.”

Melanie sighs. “I can’t believe you’re making me defend Jon, but Georgie, you’re expecting too much.”

“What?”

“You’re… no, that’s not quite what I mean. There’s this thing you do. You can’t feel fear, so you… you sort of compensate for it by refusing to get involved at all, except in the most distant way possible, and I get that, I really, really do. But you expect everyone else to do the same thing, and that’s just… that’s not how it works, Georgie! The Fears, the avatars, the books, the monsters, the world ending rituals, they’re all still out there whether you choose to get involved with them or not. And yeah, I walked away, but because it was the right choice for me, not because I think everybody should.” Georgie is utterly silent, and Melanie feels an awful pang in her chest. This is the speech she never wanted to have to make. Fucking Jon. “Yeah, maybe Jon’s just done something unbelievably stupid and let loose a bunch of monsters, but maybe he's saved the world. Or, god, maybe it was nothing to do with him at all and he’s on the run for some completely different reason. We might never know, and that’s because we’re lucky. Nothing else.”

Georgie is quiet for so long that Melanie’s heart starts to sink. She’s gone too far. She does that. She’d hoped it wouldn’t happen with Georgie, because there’s nothing Georgie loves more than a prickly little twat who won’t shut up, but, god, Jon is proof that even Georgie can’t and won’t put up with it forever.

“Do I really do that?” Georgie says.

Melanie lets out a relieved breath. “Yeah, you do,” she says. “Sorry to break it to you.”

“Huh. I… I had no idea.”

“Yeah, well, I’m just saying. But look, even if we had helped Jon, sure, it might have gone better, but it might have gone down exactly the same except that we’d have ended up on the run, too. Or it might have gone even worse. Sometimes shit just… happens.”

“I suppose.”

“Also,” Melanie adds sternly.

“Yeah?”

“If you ever make me stick up for Jon again, I will end you.”

And Georgie laughs, rich and round and beautiful.

*

It takes them three entire days to get in contact with Basira again. There’s stuff on the news about the Magnus Institute. Too many bodies were left behind after whatever happened for there not to be. But nobody seems to have a very clear idea of what, exactly, it was that happened, or whose fault it was, or what’s happening now, or… anything, really. It’s impressively unhelpful. Georgie’s refusing to let either of them leave the flat at all, not that Melanie wants to argue about that. Much. She’s even downloaded the Tesco’s app and made an online shopping account. They haven’t heard from Jon or Martin at all. Hopefully that means they’re alive and keeping their heads down rather than any of the myriad horrifying alternatives Melanie can think of.

When Basira does finally pick up one of Melanie’s calls, it’s pretty much just to say, “I’ll come and see you when I can,” and then hang up again before Melanie’s got out more than two words in response, but at least they know she’s alive and out there. Somewhere. Doing something.

Eventually, nearly a week after that, she keeps her promise. It’s almost midnight and Melanie’s nearly asleep when there’s a quiet, restrained knock at the door. Behind her, Melanie feels Georgie shift, sitting up.

“Shit,” she says. “Who do you think that is?”

“Dunno,” Melanie says. She sits up, too, and feels for the drawer of the bedside table, where her knife is. “I mean, if it was a hunter or the Not-Them, they probably wouldn’t knock, right? Could be Helen, I suppose, but she doesn’t usually… and we haven’t spoken at all since I left. No, it’s got to be Basira. You’ve got a peephole, haven’t you? Go and look.”

“Ugh.” Georgie gets out of bed. “Fine, but if something stabs me in the eye through it, you and I are having serious words.”

“Fair enough.”

But it is Basira. Melanie pads out into the living room in her slippers just as Georgie’s offering her a drink.

“No thanks,” Basira says. “I can’t stay long. Hey, Melanie.” A beat. “You look good.”

“You sound like shit,” Melanie says.

“Thanks,” Basira says, so drily that Melanie has to grin a little bit. Only for a moment, though.

“What happened?” she says. “What’s going on? Your text was really bloody cryptic, and then you just disappeared on us.”

“I’ve been busy,” Basira says. Her voice is clipped, sharp and harsh. Melanie’s heard Basira sound rattled maybe twice in the whole time she’s known her, and she’s never sounded as bad as this.

A sudden thought sends prickles of fear running over her skin. “Basira,” she says. “Where’s Daisy?”

There’s a long enough silence that she wonders if Basira’s doing something with her face that she just can’t see, improbable as Basira doing anything with her face except for radiating absolute stolidity seems. She’s opening her mouth to ask if Daisy’s okay when Basira says,

“She did what she had to. To protect us.”

Oh, fuck, Melanie thinks.

“Oh, fuck,” Melanie says.

“Yeah. I’m… working on it.”

Melanie wants to ask what the hell that means, but something in Basira’s voice keeps her quiet. Instead she asks again what happened, and this time Basira answers. She explains how Elias walked out of prison, how Jon put the pieces together about Martin and Peter and the panopticon, how Elias is Jonah Magnus, how Julia and Trevor and the Not-Them all turned up and slaughtered half the Institute between them, how Jon ran to find Martin and Daisy let the Hunt overtake her.

“She told me to run,” Basira says, and her voice actually shakes. “And I did. I… I did.”

“You did the right thing,” Georgie says gently.

“Maybe.”

It’s obvious she doesn’t want to talk about it, so Melanie says, “What about Martin? What happened with him and Jon?”

Basira exhales heavily. “Peter Lukas chucked him into the Lonely and Jon went in after him. Killed Lukas and brought Martin back out. They’re at one of Daisy’s safehouses, the hunters won’t find them there. And hopefully the cops will just assume they’re among the dead. Some of the bodies aren’t really… identifiable.”

“Who are they blaming?” Georgie says.

“No idea. Don’t think they know, either. They’re still interviewing the survivors.”

Melanie snorts. “Doubt that’ll help much.”

“No,” Basira says.

They all stand there in silence for a long moment.

“So, if there’s nothing else…” Basira starts, and at the same time, Georgie says,

“You could quit now.”

Basira cuts herself off. “What?”

“You could quit,” Georgie says. “Same as Melanie. We’d look after you until you got your feet back under you.”

“No.”

“Basira, it would mean you could escape all this. You’d be free. Wouldn’t Daisy want…”

“No,” Basira says again, and this time there’s a dangerous note in her voice.

“Basira…”

“I said no. Daisy wouldn’t want that, not with her still out there, needing… no. And it’s not just Daisy. There’s Trevor and Julia to find. Annabelle. Martin needs me to get some statements from the Institute for Jon. And Jonah Magnus is up to something, and I’m the only one left to find out what. Unless you two are offering?”

“What? No!” Georgie says. “God, how often do I have to tell you people? Melanie literally stabbed her own eyes out to get away from this bullshit.”

“Melanie?” Basira says.

“I can’t,” she says quietly. “Sorry.”

“That’s what I thought,” Basira says. “I’d better get going, then.”

“It was good to see you,” Melanie says. She feels even more shitty and helpless than she did turning Jon away.

“Yeah. You too.” The door opens. Basira says, “I’m glad you’re okay,” and then it closes again behind her.

Georgie makes a sound of deep, deep frustration. “What is with everyone?” she cries. “I… I mean, I get Jon, he’s so deep in it all he can barely see the trees, let alone the wood, but I thought Basira would be more… more…”

“I mean,” Melanie says, shrugging. “From her point of view, everybody else has fucked off and left her trying to save the world on her own.” Her throat hurts. She doesn’t want to cry, the headaches only eased off a few days ago, plus it’s who even bloody knows o’clock at night.

“But that’s crap!” Georgie says. She sounds a bit like she wants to cry, too. God. This is all such a fucking disaster. Maybe Melanie never should have quit. Even without the Slaughter, she’s good with a knife. She could have saved a few people, surely. She could help Basira now.

But it’s too late. She did quit, and she can’t go back, and Georgie is still talking, and suddenly Melanie can’t bear it any more.

“Can we just go back to bed?” she says abruptly. “We can talk about this in the morning, okay? I just… can’t, right now.”

“Oh. Yeah. Are you okay?”

With her socked feet on carpet, Georgie is suddenly, soundlessly, much closer than she was a moment ago. Melanie lifts her hands and finds Georgie’s exactly where she expects, hovering in front of her, unsure whether to touch or not. She twines their fingers together and squeezes, partly giving comfort, partly seeking it.

“Not really,” she admits. “I’m… this has all gone to shit way, way quicker than I thought it would. And I’m having a lot of feelings and I have no idea what to do with them all or how I feel about any of this despite all the feelings I’m having. It… it feels like too much. I need to sleep.”

“That’s fair,” Georgie says. “Yeah. Okay. Sleep.”

They’re back in bed, with Georgie curled around Melanie, holding her close, and Melanie on the very edge of sleep, when Georgie whispers, “Are things going to be okay?”

Melanie pretends that she’s already fallen asleep.

*

“I should have killed him,” Melanie says the next morning. They’re still in bed, not because Melanie’s having a bad day, she’s actually only had one more of those since Jon came over, but because neither of them slept well and they’re tired and depressed. Melanie is, anyway, and Georgie’s very quiet, which usually means she’s unhappy. Even the weather matches their mood. It’s cold and grim, rain splattering against the window and deadening every attempt at cheer. The Admiral seems to have been affected by the general misery and is skulking under the bed.

“Killed who?” Georgie says. “Jon?”

On another day, Melanie might jokingly agree with that, but she can’t muster up the energy today. “Elias,” she says. “Jonah. Whoever.”

“Oh. Yeah, I suppose it might have solved some problems. You tried, though.”

“Not hard enough, though, was it?” she says bitterly. “And now I think maybe I didn’t really try at all.”

“Babe, you…”

“No, I know, I know. I did try. I really, really wanted to kill him. But I also knew about his powers. I knew he’d stop me, every time. So yeah, I tried, but… trying was enough. Does that make sense? I knew I’d fail, but at least I felt like I was doing something. If I’d really tried, actually made a plan that took his powers into account instead of just playing around with knives and poison and shit… I could’ve done it.”

George is silent for a long moment. “Maybe you could,” she says at last. “And maybe you couldn’t. Doesn’t he have some whole arrangement where all of you guys die if he does? Well, not you, now, I guess.”

“He said he did,” Melanie admits. “I never more than half believed it, to be honest. And it might have been worth it.”

“Melanie.”

“Yeah, okay, maybe not. I just… he’s had two hundred years to plan everything out. It’s going to be bad, Georgie, and I don’t know if anybody can stop it.”

“Melanie,” Georgie says again. “I get that. I do. But if he’s been planning for two hundred years, it could be another fifty before whatever that plan is comes to fruition. This is probably just another step. There’s no reason why he should decide to do anything right now. What’s really changed?”

“He…” Melanie hesitates. “I don’t know. That’s the problem. He’s clearly orchestrated all this, has been orchestrating it for years. It can’t be coincidence that he walked out of prison right before Lukas and Martin went down into the panopticon. We all know who he is, now. We know where his body is, we know there’s a plan. He wouldn’t let that happen if he wasn’t about to move.”

“What if he would, though? What if he doesn’t actually care about you guys knowing? It’s not as though it matters, not when he can just put things into people’s heads and walk out of prisons and know whatever he wants whenever he wants to. Or… or maybe it’s just one more step in, like, a five hundred year plan! You’re jumping to the worst possible conclusion, Melanie.”

“And you’re being ridiculously optimistic!” she snaps. “Knowledge is his whole thing, it’s his strength, his power, his weapon. If he lets us know something as big and important as this, it’s for a reason.”

“You can’t know that,” Georgie says, her own voice almost as sharp as Melanie’s. “I know you’ve been through a lot, but I think it’s affecting the way you’re thinking about this. You’re not being objective.”

“Oh, and you are? Wake up, Georgie! You’re burying your head in the sand again, pretending you can stay nice and safe out here on the edge of things forever and never take any risks. God! It’s like you’ve realised you can’t feel fear and instead of taking advantage of it you’ve just recreated the whole framework of fear in your mind until you can’t let yourself do anything!”

“It’s called having common sense, Melanie! Maybe you should try it sometime!”

“And yet when I was digging my own eyes out of my head you were cheering me on!” Melanie shouts. “You just want…”

“Okay, wait,” Georgie says over her. “Stop. Stop, Melanie! I mean it!”

Melanie snaps her jaw shut.

“This isn’t going anywhere good,” Georgie says. “Let’s just take a minute.”

“A minute for what?” Melanie says. It comes out sulky, but Georgie’s right. She doesn’t want to yell at her, not really. She isn’t sure what she does want, but it’s not this.

“To… I don’t know. To think,” Georgie says. “I don’t want to have a screaming match. It’s… I’m going to go and have a shower, okay?”

“Fine.”

Sometimes Melanie really resents being an adult who’s done therapy and feels like she has to talk about things calmly instead of just screaming her feelings at whoever’s closest. But she doesn’t want to hurt Georgie. She doesn’t want this relationship to go bad.

By the time she’s pulled on some clothes and made them coffee, carefully timed to be ready when Georgie comes out of the shower, she isn’t even mad with Georgie any more. They sit on the sofa together with their coffee, and they try again.

“I was thinking,” Georgie begins. “While I was in the shower. That, like, maybe it doesn’t even matter.”

“What?”

“Or no, it matters, obviously, what’s going to happen. But… okay, if Jonah Magnus is planning something for soon, a Beholding ritual or whatever, what are we going to do about it?”

Melanie hesitates at that. “I… I don’t know,” she says at last. “I don’t know what we can do. We can only stop it if we can find out anything about it, and…”

“That’s what Basira’s trying to do,” Georgie says. “We can ask her to let us know if she does turn anything up, but she said the police are still all over the Institute. She’s not going to be able to find anything out until they’re gone.”

Melanie pushes her hands into her hair and groans. “Yeah. Yeah, you’re right. I mean, maybe we can help when they are gone, but until then…”

“Exactly. And if he isn’t planning anything imminently, what are we going to do about that?”

Melanie wrinkles her nose. “I dunno. The same, I suppose. Try and find out what’s going on, deal with it when we have more information. What are you getting at?”

“That,” Georgie says simply. “Look, I… we disagree about what’s likely to happen next, but the fact is that we don’t have any information, and we don’t have any way of getting it yet, so whatever it is, things for us basically stay the same. We just have to keep our heads down and wait.”

And therein, Melanie supposes, lies the rub. She loathes keeping her head down and waiting. But Georgie isn’t wrong. Even Basira has no way to find out what Jonah is planning yet. Melanie groans aloud again, realising something else.

“Fuck, even when Basira does get the run of the Institute she’s not going to find anything Jonah doesn’t want her to, is she?”

“Probably not,” Georgie says. “I mean, it’s like you said. Knowledge is his whole thing.”

“Shit.” Melanie scrubs her hands over her face. “Whatever we do, it’ll probably just end up playing into his hands. Maybe you’re right. Maybe we should just stay out of it all.”

“Maybe,” Georgie says. “I don’t know. I don’t think there’s a right answer.”

“Yeah. I guess not.”

“Sorry.”

“Not your fault.” Melanie reaches over and squeezes Georgie’s hand. She drains her coffee and sits there, listening to the rain. “I still kind of wish I’d killed him when I had the chance, though.”

*

“How do I look?” Melanie says.

“Hot.”

“Are you even looking at me?”

“Of cour—oh!”

“There it is.”

“Do we need to call your doctor?”

“Nah, they said it might happen and it wasn’t a problem. Anyway, it’s not like I’m getting prosthetics, so it doesn’t actually matter if anything stays the right shape.”

“You’ve decided for sure, then?”

Melanie shrugs. “Honestly, I’d pretty much decided from the beginning. I’m not letting anything even vaguely eye-like near my face again.”

“Fair enough.” She can hear the grin in Georgie’s voice as she goes on, “Although I did quite like the idea of you having a knife painted on one prosthetic and FUCK BEHOLDING on the other. Would have made a good talking point.”

Melanie laughs. “Sorry to disappoint.”

“Nah, I get it. It’s better to be safe.”

“Yeah.” Melanie touches her eye sockets, which feel weirdly empty now. But it’s amazing what you can get used to, it turns out. She’ll get used to this, too. “To be honest, even the conformers were starting to freak me out a little bit. I know they don’t look anything like eyes, but the shape… the right one came out and I couldn’t face putting it back in, so I thought sod it and chucked them both in the bin. I just don’t want to do anything that might make the Eye think I’m inviting it back into my head, you know?”

“I know. It’s… it’s sensible.”

Melanie lifts her hands, finds Georgie’s face, and kisses her. “I can, on occasion, be sensible,” she says.

“Could’ve fooled me,” Georgie mumbles between kisses. After a while, she pulls back and says, “Mel, can I ask you something?”

“Sure. What’s up?”

“Why didn’t you tell me before you… you know?”

For a moment, Melanie blanks on what Georgie could possibly mean. “Before I what?” she says. “Before I showered? You know I’m great at that now, I’m not going to fall over or hurt myself or anything.”

Georgie snorts. “Not that. Before you got rid of your eyes, I mean.”

“Oh,” Melanie says. “That.”

“Yeah. I just… did you think I’d try and stop you?”

Melanie carefully avoids stubbing her toe on the coffee table as she finds the sofa and sits down. A moment later, it dips as Georgie sits beside her. “Of course I didn’t think you’d stop me,” she says quietly. “I was pretty sure you’d help me if I asked.”

“Obviously I would,” Georgie says instantly. “It was… I mean, it was incredibly brave of you to do it on your own, but if you thought I’d help, why wouldn’t you ask?”

Melanie smiles rather wanly. “It was that, really. Bravery. Or, you know, lack of it. I had to psych myself up for it pretty hard, and, I dunno, I felt like I was on the cusp of not daring to do it anyway.”

“But I could have helped,” Georgie says again.

“I know, but that’s the thing. If I… if I backed out at the last minute, god, you’d have been so disappointed in me. I know what you think about Jon and him refusing to leave. I couldn’t bear to have you look at me in the same way.”

“Melanie, I wouldn’t.”

She shrugs. “You might. That’s why I told Jon. He wanted me to do it as much as you did, I think, but I don’t actually care what he thinks of me. That made it easy.”

“Oh.” Georgie’s voice is small. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to… to put pressure on you, or…”

“Oh my god, shut up,” Melanie says. “That isn’t what I mean at all! It’s good! You wanted me to escape, you want me to… to be better, all the time. Do you really think I’d still be going to therapy if it wasn’t for you, Georgie? Jesus! It’s good that you have high expectations of me. I like it! I mean, yeah, it’s a lot sometimes, but in a good way, you know?”

“Oh,” Georgie says again, but more hopefully.

“Yeah, idiot. You believe in me, and that makes me want to be better. Do you know how many people have ever done that for me? Because it’s not very many. Like, four, maybe, and that’s counting my therapist. So don’t you dare apologise.”

“Fine, apology retracted.”

Melanie laughs. “Good. Thanks. It was just… the eye thing was a lot, you know? It was something I needed to do on my own.”

“Okay,” Georgie says. Her hand slips into Melanie’s and squeezes. “So it… it wasn’t that you didn’t trust me?”

Oh, that’s what’s been bothering Georgie. Melanie wraps her arms around her.

“Absolutely fucking not,” she says firmly. “I’ve never trusted anyone as much as I trust you, Georgie, okay? I mean, seriously, I’d have let myself be sectioned rather than go and stay with Jon or Basira. Or Daisy, god. Can you imagine?”

Georgie laughs rather wetly into her shoulder. “All right, yeah. I believe you. Thanks, Melanie.”

“I just needed it to be… to be my thing, when I got rid of my eyes,” she says. “It was the only way I could actually make myself do it. Also, if it helps at all, I regretted not telling you beforehand, like, the second I’d finished.”

“As you should,” Georgie says, but she’s laughing again, properly this time. She lifts her head from Melanie’s shoulder. “No, it’s okay. I get it. But, um, thanks for explaining. I think I needed to hear that.”

“Good.” Melanie kisses her. “You’ll always be the first person I call. Okay?”

“Okay. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

*

It’s not that it’s difficult, although it is, sometimes.

And it’s not that it’s easy, although it’s that, too. Often.

Sometimes it’s so easy that Melanie wonders why she and Georgie haven’t been together since the first time they exchanged jokey little messages about… god, some haunted house, Melanie thinks. That one a bit outside Cockermouth, maybe. Yeah. It was an abandoned farmhouse, and it’d been a nightmare trying to catch and shut away the chickens that scratched about outside as if they’d been there since the farmhouse had been left empty thirty years before. At first she and the crew had thought about trying to make them a thing, but evil little bastards as they are, there’s really no way you can make chickens seem spooky on film, so they’d spent about two hours trying to get the bloody things out of the way. She can’t remember, all these years later, why she contacted Georgie about the place, but they’d had a good laugh about the chickens.

Or, if not then, perhaps the first time they met in real life. A collaboration episode between Ghost Hunt UK and What the Ghost? Haunted pub, that time. Mostly an excuse for them all to get pissed and have a good night together. There’d been a bit of flirting between her and Georgie, but Georgie’d backed right off when Pandora had joined them later on. In hindsight, it was never going to work between Melanie and Pan, not long term, but Melanie had still been devastated when they’d broken up. Maybe she should have grabbed Georgie that night in the pub and run off with her there and then.

But who’s she kidding? She’d been young and stupid and much, much rougher around the edges back then. She’s pretty sure that even Georgie wouldn’t have put up with her for more than a few weeks. The only reason she and Pan lasted as long as they did was because Pan worked nights and Melanie worked days and was still trying to get Ghost Hunt UK properly off the ground, and they could easily go two or three weeks without seeing each other at all. It had been easy, but not like it is with Georgie. It had only been easy because Melanie hadn’t had to think about things. She and Pan would drift together, enjoy a few hours together, and then drift apart again until their calendars coincided once more. Melanie had barely missed her at all. Amazing, she thinks now, that she mistook that for love.

She’d miss Georgie. God, she’d miss her like losing another eye. Like having a part of her own heart ripped out of her chest and burned in front of her. With Georgie it’s easy because they know each other outside and in, and it’s hard for the same reason, but even when it’s hard, it’s good. It’s right. Melanie’s never been very good at feeling right in other people’s company. But it makes sense, she supposes, because it’s not just the few weeks they’ve been dating, it’s the years of friendship before that, and especially the way they’ve grown together over the last year. It’s Georgie taking her to therapy so that she actually goes, and it’s talking all day, all night, telling each other the hard things, the deep things, the things that really matter. It’s Melanie becoming an unofficial member of the What the Ghost? team, guesting on episodes once a month or so, helping Georgie with research and scripts and the ad reads she detests so much. It’s Melanie bringing treats for the Admiral every time she comes over, and cooking in Georgie’s kitchen and Georgie cooking in hers. It’s Georgie calling her in floods of tears when her granny died and Melanie coming over at eleven o’clock at night to hold her and listen to stories about her granny until they both fell asleep. It’s all the moments, huge and tiny, that made them falling in love seem almost inevitable.

Melanie wonders what it’ll be like in three months’ time. In six. In a year. Will she still be having the same thoughts five years from now?

Perhaps it doesn’t matter. Perhaps all that matters is that here and now, being with Georgie feels as right and natural as breathing.

The future will come soon enough.

*

“I hesitated,” Georgie reads. “‘I like your costume,’ I said at last. ‘I like your songs, and the way you sing them. I like the way you talk to Tricky. I like your… hair.’ Here I stumbled; and now she seemed to blush.”

“We’ve all been there,” Melanie says.

Georgie laughs. “Oh, yeah,” she says. “You should have seen me trying to ask my first girlfriend out. The second I managed to get the words out, I burst into tears and ran to the toilets and refused to come out until the end of break. I was fourteen,” she adds explanatorially.

“Oh my god,” Melanie cackles. “That’s… wow. What did she say?”

“We dated for a whole six weeks before this girl Lottie from the year above asked her out.”

“She dumped you for someone called Lottie?”

“You only say that because you never saw Lottie,” Georgie says. “We used to call her Lottie the Hottie.”

Melanie starts to laugh again. “Lottie the Hottie!” she gurgles. “Jesus Christ, Georgie!”

“We were fourteen,” Georgie says, and Melanie can hear the grin in her voice. “We weren’t exactly wordsmiths.”

“Lottie the Hottie,” Melanie says again, and gives way to another series of giggles.

“All right, that’s enough out of you.” Georgie whacks Melanie’s shins with her book, but she’s laughing too. “Do you want me to read this to you or not?”

“I do, I do,” Melanie says. “I grovel and beg, etcetera, etcetera.”

“Much better,” Georgie says. She picks the book up again.

They’re on the sofa together, Melanie lying on her back with her head propped on a cushion and her legs thrown across Georgie’s lap, the Admiral purring on her chest, and they’re on chapter two of Tipping the Velvet, which is already one of the gayest books Melanie has ever read. When Georgie first offered to read aloud, Melanie had been doubtful. It had just seemed so terribly Jane Austen-ish. But, unsurprisingly given the success of her podcast, Georgie has a lovely reading voice and takes enormous delight in doing all the voices, and Melanie is now fully on board with the whole experience. It’s way better than a normal boring old audiobook.

Georgie clears her throat. “There was a second’s almost awkward silence – then, suddenly, as if from somewhere very near at hand, there came the sound of music – the blast of a horn and the pulse of a drum – and a cheer, like the roaring of the wind in some vast sea-shell.”

Melanie scratches the Admiral behind the ears the way he likes, and smiles as she listens.

*

“We ordered peanut butter,” Georgie says in mystified tones. “Why the hell have they sent marmite?”

“Marmite?” Melanie brightens. “Someone at Tesco’s is a genius substituter.”

“Eugh,” Georgie says. “I can’t believe I invited a marmite lover into my home. You realise I’m going to have to ask you to leave immediately?”

“You just haven’t eaten it right,” Melanie says. “There’s this thing Daisy used to make, with…” She trails off, throat suddenly thick.

“Hey,” Georgie says gently. “It’s okay. She’ll…”

“Have you heard anything more from Basira?” Melanie says.

“Not… no. But that doesn’t have to mean anything. Daisy could still be all right.”

“Yeah, I don’t think so, Georgie. She was already only barely holding the Hunt off, and it was making her ill. Now that she’s let it in…”

“Right.” Georgie’s silent for a while. There’s only the sound of her unpacking groceries, sticking raised dots on the things that aren’t obviously distinguishable by feel, and putting them away. Usually Melanie’d help, but she’s had enough dizzy spells today for both of them to agree it’s best if she doesn’t do too much. At least the confusion seems to have almost completely left her. Another couple of weeks and the Beholding withdrawal might be gone altogether.

After a while, Georgie says, “It seemed like Basira had a plan, though. To help her.”

Melanie shrugs. “Or to kill her.”

“Oh, come on,” Georgie scoffs. But she must see something in Melanie’s face, because she swears softly immediately afterwards.

“I’m pretty sure it’s what Daisy would want,” Melanie says. “If there was no way to bring her back from it again.”

“Surely there must be something,” Georgie says. “Like what you did to get rid of the Eye.”

“Maybe, but if there is I don’t think anybody knows what it is, so it’s not going to do us much good. The Buried was only ever a temporary solution.”

“I suppose,” Georgie says, heaves another sigh, goes back to putting the shopping away. “You don’t think she’d really come here, do you? Basira seemed to think she might.”

“I doubt it, to be honest,” Melanie says. “She’s all blood and instinct now, and it’s been two weeks. If she wanted to come for us, she already would have. I think Basira just wanted to cover all her bases.”

“Good. I don’t think we’d do great in a fight with her.”

Melanie snorts. “If she does come here, our best bet is to bar the door and windows and pray she isn’t strong enough to punch holes in the walls.”

“Right,” Georgie says. “Right. Yeah.”

“She won’t, though.”

“Sure.”

“Maybe you’re right,” Melanie says a little later. “Maybe it’ll all turn out okay in the end.”

“Yeah,” Georgie says, quiet and sad. “Yeah, maybe.”

*

“Did you see that? Did… did you see?”

“Yeah! Yeah, I… oh my god!”

“Shit!”

“Oh my god, yeah, yeah, that was absolutely… a shadow.”

“Yeah. Shit, I felt a chill, did you feel a chill?”

“Bullshit!” Melanie yells, and throws popcorn at her laptop.

“Oookay, you have to stop doing that,” Georgie says. “Your aim is getting way too accurate and you’re getting popcorn bits in your keyboard.”

“Huh, nice, didn’t realise I was that good. Did you see a shadow?”

“The camera’s moving around so much I can barely see the walls of the place, let alone a shadow,” Georgie says, laughing.

Melanie scoffs. “God, it’s like they’re not even trying.”

“We’re here for you,” one of the ghost hunters on her laptop says in a quiet, earnest voice. “If there’s something you want to tell the world, we’re here to carry that message for you.”

“Shut the fuck up!” Melanie shouts. “You don’t give a shit!”

On the sofa beside her, Georgie is shaking with laughter. “Didn’t you used to say stuff like that all the time on Ghost Hunt UK?”

“We never claimed to give a tiny rat’s arse about the ghosts,” Melanie says indignantly. “We were at least honest about our intentions, unlike these fuckers.”

A scream comes from the laptop. “Something touched my neck, oh my god, oh my god!”

“Okay, guys, we need to be really, really careful here, I’m getting a really strong feeling that whatever’s here does not want us in its space, so just…”

Melanie throws more popcorn in the general direction of the screen. “You don’t have a feeling,” she says derisively. “Fucking amateurs. I can’t believe you’re making me watch this crap, Georgie.”

“If I recall correctly, all I actually said was ‘we could watch…’ and you filled in the blanks yourself.”

“Yeah, but ‘we could watch’ only ever ends one way.”

“That’s because watching you watch them never stops being hilarious.”

Melanie snorts as tense music shimmers out tinnily from her laptop speakers. “What’s happening now? No, wait, let me guess. They’re creeping down a dark corridor.”

“Damn, you’re good,” Georgie says. “I think we’re supposed to be seeing some sort of shape at the end, but it literally just looks dark.”

“They’d better hope they don’t find anything real,” Melanie says darkly, and for a moment they’re both silent. “Sorry,” she adds. “Didn’t mean to bring the mood down.”

“No, no,” Georgie says. “I mean, you’re not wrong. Stuff like this, the podcast, it all seems kind of…”

“Pointless?”

“I was going to say childish. Innocent, you know? Conjuring up horrors for ourselves with no idea that there’s actual real shit out there.”

“In fairness, some of the stuff you’ve done What the Ghost? episodes about has been real,” Melanie says. “But yeah. You’ve got a point.”

“Did you think it was real?” Georgie asks, as one of the ghost hunters describes in a trembling whisper how a spirit has just swooped past her face. “Oh, they caught it on camera. A bat.”

Melanie chortles. “What a load of bollocks. None of this is real, god, Georgie, how gullible do you think I am?”

“Not this,” Georgie says, and Melanie can feel her waving a dismissive hand. “When you were doing Ghost Hunt UK, I mean. Did you believe in it?”

“Oh, that. Yeah, I did. Pretty embarrassing, looking back.”

“I don’t know, I think that’s better than straight up deliberately faking everything.”

“I suppose. I mean, we hammed stuff up for the cameras, screamed at little noises, jumped at shadows, all that stuff. You’ve got to make it exciting if you want an audience to hang around. But yeah, behind it all, I really thought we were doing something… I dunno. Meaningful. You know?”

“Yeah.” Georgie’s hand slips into hers, her thick, strong fingers wrapping around Melanie’s.

“Kind of wish I’d been right,” Melanie admits. “Grey lady ghosts and easily exorcised demons would’ve been a lot less scary than what’s actually out there. Probably wouldn’t have had to stab my own eyes out.”

“I’m sorry, love,” Georgie says. She lifts Melanie’s hand up and kisses her knuckles, then turns it around and uncurls her fingers so that she can kiss the palm, too.

“Yeah, well. Not much we can do about it now.”

“Still.”

Melanie sighs. She leans in to rest her head against Georgie’s shoulder as the ghost hunters on her laptop wind up their investigation, swearing they’ll never go back to that hospital again because the spirits there were just too scary.

“We don’t engage with hostile entities,” one of them says solemnly. “And we advise all of you out there not to, either.”

“Hostile entities,” Melanie mutters. “You wouldn’t know a hostile entity if it bit you on the arse. Lucky bastard.”

Georgie strokes slowly, soothingly, through her hair. “You think we’d still have got together if it hadn’t been for… hostile entities?”

There’s a question. There’s a real bloody question. Would they? And would it have worked if they had?

“I don’t know,” she says at last. “I’d like to think so, but I’ve… all this, the real ghosts, the Institute, the… all of it. It’s changed me a lot. Might never have gone to therapy without it, and it wasn’t just the Slaughter stuff and the Unknowing and Elias and everything that I’ve needed therapy for. There was stuff before that. I was always angry. Maybe we’d have tried and it wouldn’t have worked, or… I don’t know.”

“Mm.” Georgie kisses the top of her head. “I’m not glad all of it’s happened, but I am very, very glad to have you.”

“Yeah,” Melanie says, wriggling closer still until Georgie is warm and strong all around her. “Me too. It’d be shit without you, even if there weren’t any Fears.”

“Wow,” Georgie says. She sounds both amused and very, very soft. “So you’re saying you’d rather have me and the Fears than neither?”

Melanie huffs a little laugh into her shoulder. “Apparently, yeah.”

Georgie kisses her hair again, her arms strong and firm around Melanie. “Well,” she says. “Me too. Very much, me too.”

*

It’s been five weeks and five days, now, since Melanie stabbed her own eyes out.

It’s been three weeks and three days since Jon asked for help and they sent him away.

It’s been one week and six days since they sent Basira away, too.

And it’s been somewhere in the region of seventeen hours since Georgie put the finishing touches to the script for the next episode of What the Ghost? with a whoop of triumph and a cracking of her back that made Melanie suggest she make an appointment with a chiropractor. Slaughterville: The Town of a Thousand Corpses, it’s called, and the script is honestly a masterpiece, well-researched, clever, witty. Georgie’s audience is going to eat it up.

They’ve just finished lunch, and Melanie is doing the washing up while Georgie dries and puts away, and there’s a moment, a tiny moment, when Melanie finishes washing a plate and moves to put it on the draining board, and Georgie says, “I’ve got it,” and then takes it, the two of them working in perfect synchronicity and mutual understanding.

Melanie thinks, this is it. It doesn’t get any better than this. It can’t. She thinks, if I died right now, I’d die perfectly happy.

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t need to.

When they’ve finished, Georgie says, “You’ll be okay if I go and record now?”

And Melanie replies, “Yes, Georgie, I can sit alone in my own living room for an hour or two just fine, thanks.” A beat. “Your own living room, I mean.”

“It can be yours, too,” Georgie says. “If you’d like.”

Melanie’s heart beats a little faster. “Yeah,” she says. “I would. I would like that.”

“Okay, then,” Georgie says, Her voice is soft and Melanie can tell she’s smiling. “It’s yours.” She leans forward and brushes a small, casual kiss against Melanie’s lips. “Just yell if you need me,” she says.

And then she’s gone, the door of her tiny recording studio, which is just a fancy name for what used to be a cupboard, closing behind her. Melanie sprawls out on the sofa, popping in her earbuds to listen to a podcast, and lets herself relax. She’s getting better at that, slowly. It still takes a conscious effort, but it’s much easier now that she isn’t terrified all the time. And since she’s had Georgie, of course. Georgie makes everything easier.

Twenty eight minutes later she sits up abruptly, swinging her legs off the sofa and tearing the buds out of her ears. The door of Georgie’s recording studio slams open.

“Are you okay?” she demands. “I heard screaming. Oh… oh my god.”

“Wasn’t me,” Melanie says, fumbling her way towards Georgie, who meets her halfway, grabbing her hand and yanking her towards the window. The screaming hasn’t stopped. “What’s happening?”

“It’s… I don’t know. I’m not… the sky,” Georgie says.

“What’s wrong with the sky?” Melanie demands, her voice rising, shrill and frightened. The screaming from outside is getting louder, and there are other sounds, too. Bad sounds. Really bad sounds. “Georgie, tell me.”

“Right,” Georgie says, a little breathless. “Sorry, yeah. It’s, er… it’s like the sky’s watching. The sun isn’t the sun any more so much as, you know, a giant eyeball.”

“What?” Melanie almost shrieks. “How?”

“I don’t know! It just is! And down there, there’s…” She falters. “There’s a lot to watch. There’s… I can’t tell exactly what’s going on, but it seems to be hurting a lot of people. And… and all the windows I can see… there’s people at all of them. They aren’t watching us, they’re mostly looking down but, yeah, there’s a lot of them. And… fuck!”

“What? What’s happening?” Melanie knows that she’s holding onto Georgie’s hand hard enough to hurt, but she doesn’t care.

“Nothing, nothing, I mean, nothing… not to us. Someone just fell past the window. Hit the ground.”

“Shit, are they…?”

“I mean, they got up and walked away. Well, sort of staggered away. I…”

“Christ.”

“Yeah.”

They stand there like that, beside the window, hand in hand, for a very long time. Georgie watches, and Melanie listens.

And the world changes.